Inspect What You Expect: Why Standard Work Isn’t Micromanagement

Let’s get one thing straight: holding people accountable to a standard isn’t micromanagement.

In Lean, we talk a lot about “Standard Work.” Not because we want to rob people of creativity, but because we want to define the one best way to do something. That’s where creativity starts, not ends.

Here’s the reality: Without clear expectations and a simple system to inspect them, confusion wins. People default to personal preference, tribal knowledge, or best guesses. And the customer feels it.

I have seen this across industries. A call center team that doesn’t know how to start or close a customer interaction will give 12 different versions of service, some good, some... not. A hiring manager with no standard interview guide will base hiring decisions on gut feelings. A fabrication crew with no consistent morning checklist will miss the same steps over and over again.

Inspecting what you expect doesn’t mean standing over someone’s shoulder, it means making the invisible visible.

It means:

• We agree on how we start the day.

• We know what a great interview sounds like.

• We can walk the floor or listen to a project management call and know if we’re on or off standard.

When a leader checks in on this, it’s not because they don’t trust the team, it’s because they care about the customer and want to empower the team with clarity.

I have heard it put this way, “Creativity is welcome in the improvement of the standard, not in random deviation from it.” Or, if your team wants to do it better, that’s Lean. If they just want to do it differently, that’s chaos.

So next time you hear “Isn’t that micromanaging?” try this response:

“No. It’s leading with clarity. I inspect what I expect, and I expect us to get better together.”